A Theoretical Account of Translation - Without a Translation Theory

Target ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernst-August Gutt
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Relevance Theory ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Theoretical Account ◽  
Direct Translation ◽  
Basic Criterion ◽  
Special Case

Abstract This paper argues that the phenomenon commonly referred to as "translation" can be accounted for naturally within the relevance theory of communication developed by Sperber and Wilson: there is no need for a distinct general theory of translation. Most kinds of translation can be analysed as varieties of interpretive use. I distinguish direct from indirect translation. Direct translation corresponds to the idea that translation should convey the same meaning as the original. It requires the receptors to familiarise themselves with the context envisaged for the original text. The idea that the meaning of the original can be communicated to any receptor audience, no matter how different their background, is shown to be a misconception based on mistaken assumptions about communication. Indirect translation involves looser degrees of resemblance. Direct translation is merely a special case of interpretive use, whereas indirect translation is the general case. In all cases the success of the translation depends on how well it meets the basic criterion for all human communication, which is consistency with the principle of relevance. Thus the different varieties of translation can be accounted for without recourse to typologies of texts, translations, functions or the like.

Extreme self-sacrifice beyond fusion: Moral expansiveness and the special case of allyship

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Crimston ◽  
Matthew J. Hornsey
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Biological Markers ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Relevant Dimension ◽  
Special Case

AbstractAs a general theory of extreme self-sacrifice, Whitehouse's article misses one relevant dimension: people's willingness to fight and die in support of entities not bound by biological markers or ancestral kinship (allyship). We discuss research on moral expansiveness, which highlights individuals’ capacity to self-sacrifice for targets that lie outside traditional in-group markers, including racial out-groups, animals, and the natural environment.

Alfred Schütz : une autre théorie de la pertinence et son application en traduction

Fachsprache ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 63-78
Author(s):  
Margarete Flöter-Durr ◽  
Thierry Grass
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Information Science ◽  
Relevance Theory ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
Alfred Schutz ◽  
Legal Translation ◽  
Translation Techniques ◽  
Alfred Schütz ◽  
One Year

Despite the work of Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson (1989), the concept of relevance has not enjoyed the popularity it deserved among translators as it appears to be more productive in information science and sociology than in translation studies. The theory of relevance provides underpinnings of a unified account of translation proposed by Ernst-August Gutt. However, if the concept of relevance should take into account all parameters of legal translation, the approach should be pragmatic and not cognitive: The aim of a relevant translation is to produce a legal text in the target language which appears relevant to the lawyer in the target legal system, namely a text that can be used in the same way as the original source text. The legal translator works as a facilitator from one legal system into another and relevance is the core of this pragmatic approach which requires translation techniques like adaptation rather than through-translation or calque (in the terminology of Delisle/Lee-Jahnk/Cormier 1999). This contribution tries to show that relevance theory, which was developed in the field of sociology by Alfred Schütz, could also be applied to translation theory with the aim of producing a correct translation in a concrete situation. Some examples extracted from one year of the practice of an expert law translator (German-French) at the Court of Appeal in the Alsace region illustrate our claim and underpin an approach of legal translation and its heuristics that is both pragmatic and reflexive.

Reading Beyond the Code

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Relevance Theory ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Communicative Acts ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Code Model ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Central Claim

This book explores the value for literary studies of relevance theory, an inferential approach to communication in which the expression and recognition of intentions plays a major role. Drawing on a wide range of examples from lyric poetry and the novel, nine of the ten chapters are written by literary specialists and use relevance theory both as an overall framework and as a resource for detailed analysis. The final chapter, written by the co-founder of relevance theory, reviews the issues addressed by the volume and explores their implications for cognitive theories of how communicative acts are interpreted in context. Originally designed to explain how people understand each other in everyday face-to-face exchanges, relevance theory—described in an early review by a literary scholar as ‘the makings of a radically new theory of communication, the first since Aristotle’s’—sheds light on the whole spectrum of human modes of communication, including literature in the broadest sense. Reading Beyond the Code is unique in using relevance theory as a prime resource for literary study, and is also the first to apply the model to a range of phenomena widely seen as supporting an ‘embodied’ conception of cognition and language where sensorimotor processes play a key role. This broadened perspective serves to enhance the value for literary studies of the central claim of relevance theory: that the ‘code model’ is fundamentally inadequate to account for human communication, and in particular for the modes of communication that are proper to literature.

The Problems of Ignorance and Uncertainty

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly M. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Decision Makers ◽  
Lower Tier ◽  
Theoretical Account ◽  
Hybrid Approaches ◽  
Tier System ◽  
Special Case

Chapter 9 turns to further epistemic barriers for decision makers: the problems of (nonmoral) ignorance and (nonmoral) uncertainty. The concepts of “ignorance” and “uncertainty” are elucidated, the problem of uncertainty is defined, and it is argued that the problem of ignorance should be treated as a special case of the problem of uncertainty. The three salient attempts to solve the problem are the Pragmatic, Austere, and Hybrid approaches. Combined solutions to the problem of error and the problem of uncertainty are explored, and it is argued that the only feasible approaches marry the Austere Response to the problem of error with the Hybrid Response to the problem of uncertainty in a two-tier system. The top-tier code provides the correct theoretical account of right and wrong, while the lower-tier rules provide associated decision-guides. Consistency requires that different normative terms be used by the top-tier rules and by the lower-tier rules.

Hypo-elasticity and plasticity

1956 ◽  
Vol 234 (1196) ◽  
pp. 46-59 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Constitutive Equations ◽  
Work Hardening ◽  
Strain Curve ◽  
Simple Extension ◽  
Logarithmic Strain ◽  
Elasticity Equations ◽  
Plastic Materials ◽  
Special Case

A general theory of work-hardening incompressible plastic materials is developed as a special case of Truesdell’s theory of hypo-elasticity. Equations are given in general coordinates for a single loading followed by one unloading, and attention is directed to materials for which the stress-logarithmic strain curve for unloading in simple extension is linear. Using a particular case of the corresponding constitutive equations for loading, which is a generalization of that suggested by Prager, applications are made to a number of specific problems.

The behaviour of supersonic flow past a body of revolution, far from the axis

1950 ◽  
Vol 201 (1064) ◽  
pp. 89-109 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Supersonic Flow ◽  
General Theory ◽  
Body Of Revolution ◽  
Flow Past ◽  
Physical Importance ◽  
Special Case ◽  
Pointed Body ◽  
Asymptotic Forms

A theory is developed of the supersonic flow past a body of revolution at large distances from the axis, where a linearized approximation is valueless owing to the divergence of the characteristics at infinity. It is used to find the asymptotic forms of the equations of the shocks which are formed from the neighbourhoods of the nose and tail. In the special case of a slender pointed body, the general theory at large distances is used to modify the linearized approximation to give a theory which is uniformly valid at all distances from the axis. The results which are of physical importance are summarized in the conclusion (§ 9) and compared with the results of experimental observations.

scholarly journals The Disappearing Medium: Remarks on Language in Translation

2011 ◽  
pp. 165-179
Author(s):  
George Varsos
Keyword(s):  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Recent Criticism ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
German Romanticism ◽  
Alternative Strategies ◽  
Translation Strategies ◽  
Language And Culture

This essay discusses problems pertaining to the disappearance of the language of the original text in the case of literary translation. After a reminder of recent criticism directed against ethnocentric translation strategies, the question is raised of the theoretical promises of alternative strategies. The text examines the different ways in which the relations between language and culture are theorized, taking two lines of inquiry that have strongly infl uenced contemporary translation theory: that of German Romanticism and that of Walter Benjamin.

scholarly journals Gender problems of translation of English language poetry in the paradigm of literary theory and the extra-linguistic aspect of translation studies (based on the poem 449 «I died for Beauty» by E. Dickinson)

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 78-84
Author(s):  
Tamara Skrypnyk ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Main Idea ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
First Person ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
Personal Pronoun ◽  
Male Character ◽  
Feminine Gender ◽  
The Past ◽  
Linguistic Aspect

The paper considers the poem 449 written by Emily Dickinson and its translations into Ukrainian and Russian. The translation of the grammatical syntactic syntagma «I died for Beauty…» is also analyzed. The work of V. Sdobnikov and O. Petrova «Theory of Translation» where the scholars propose to apply literary and extra-linguistic aspects of translation theory was especially important for the present research. The principles of literary and linguistic translation theory have been applied in the process of philological and linguistic-stylistic types of analysis. The literary studies theory emphasizes the principle of vocabulary adequacy in the original work and its translations. The extra-linguistic aspect of the linguistic translation theory has impelled us to consider the morphological category of gender of the personal pronoun «I» in singular and the verb «died» in the past tense. In modern (synchronous) English, the morphological category of gender of the personal pronoun in the first person and the verb in the past tense are not denoted by morphemes, whereas in the Ukrainian and Russian languages the verb in the past tense has the suffix «l» and the ending «а» for the feminine gender. That is why some translators have mistakenly interpreted the image of the poem's first persona by creating the image of a lyrical male character, which violated the gender right of the poetess. The translators were to take into account the biographical right of the poetess to write on her own behalf, and the fact that in most works E. Dickinson revealed her inner world in the first person and applied the personal pronoun «I» in her poems very often, which testifies to the femininity of her poetry. Russian translators M. Zenkevich and A. Kudrjavytsky translated the structure «I died for Beauty» by using the words of the lyrical woman-character. They recreated the image of a lyrical heroine who is capable to give her life for Beauty. Another translator V. Markova created the lyrical male character. In her translation both characters are opposed to each other, because the poet is «he» while the Beauty is «she». In Markova’s translation it is the man who died for beauty, love and truth. Ukrainian translators D. Pavlychko and N. Tuchynska also created the lyrical male character and interpreted the image from the first person that changed the original author’s artistic message. It should be noted that the method of character masculinization in the translation of grammatical syntactic syntagma has changed the main idea of the work. This violated the gender right of the poetess to create the image of a noble lyrical heroine who is able to give her life for Beauty. The article also focuses on the peculiarities of the syntax of the poem, the special meaning of dashes in the original text and its translations as well as the method of character onimization. The lexical adequacy of the poem under consideration and its translations into Ukrainian and Russian are analyzed.

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